President Donald Trump signed a major Dodd-Frank rollback into law Thursday, hoping to bring regulatory relief to community banks across the U.S. The president explained Dodd-Frank’s costly regulations gave large banks a negative advantage at the cost of small banks throughout the country. Click the headline to read more.

Tax reform. Tax reform. Tax reform.
The big issue facing housing and mortgage finance, by far, is tax reform. The Senate passed its major tax reform Friday night, and now the two parties will need to come to a consensus on which tax bill they will send to the president's desk. For now there is no consensus, or clear guidance, on what tax reform will entail.

Back in April, more than 20 states clamped business restrictions on Ocwen Financial for alleged rampant errors with homeowners’ escrow accounts and other mortgage servicing issues. Now, five months later, Ocwen is beginning to dig its way out of from under those restrictions, but the company isn’t getting away clean.

Wells Fargo announced it purchased approximately $51 billion in mortgage servicing rights from Seneca Mortgage Investment. Wells Fargo is one of the biggest players in servicing residential mortgage loans, with a servicing portfolio that totaled more than $1.5 trillion as of June 30, 2017.

Over the last few months, New Residential Investment significantly increased its mortgage servicing rights portfolio through a deal with Ocwen Financial. But that’s not the only new connection between Ocwen and New Residential, as a company that has a close relationship with Ocwen just inked a new deal with New Residential – Altisource Portfolio Solutions.

Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment and RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing announced a new agreement this week that ties the two companies together on the mortgage servicing on as much as $2 billion per month. Here are the details.

Nationstar Mortgage, the company soon to be known as Mr. Cooper, reported Thursday that it saw its first quarterly net loss in a year, but the news is actually better than it appears. Overall, Nationstar posted a GAAP net loss of $20 million (or $0.20 per diluted share) in the second quarter, but on an adjusted basis Nationstar saw earnings of $42 million, or $0.43 per share.

Back in May, Ocwen Financial announced that it was nearing a massive mortgage servicing rights deal with New Residential Investment, in a deal that would also see New Residential acquire nearly 5% of Ocwen. Now, the deal is signed and sealed.

Annaly Capital Management and Bayview Asset Management announced Tuesday that the companies reached an agreement that will see Bayview acquire Pingora Holdings and its subsidiaries, Pingora Asset Management and Pingora Loan Servicing, from Annaly.

[Commentary] I will be moderating a CMBA servicer panel promisingly entitled “Utilization of Technology in Mortgage Servicing” that will allow some of the experts in the industry to talk about the current industry environment and how technology helps them manage their business. Here's what we're going to cover and who will be on stage with me.

This month inHousingWire magazine

He wears t-shirts to his televised interviews; not very CEO. He played sports at a high level, but rarely brings it up and when he does he talks about it as a mere chapter in his life. Honestly, who plays a Super Bowl and doesn’t describe it as the defining moment in their personal journey? Casey Crawford, that’s who. His family is a big part of his life of course, but he talks about his even larger family — his coworkers — in terms that are just as glowing.

Feature

One of the things that has bedeviled mortgage financing post-crisis has been the absence of the private label mortgage backed securities market. During the peak years, private label MBS issuance topped $1 trillion. In 2017, only $70 billion of private label RMBS were issued, although that is a big increase from 2016.

Commentary

Digital technology has disrupted businesses and industries from publishing to public transportation, so can the mortgage industry be far behind? Actually, anyone who’s applied for a mortgage recently will have recognized that things are already changing fast.